1) Curation - Be the BuzzFeed of...

Let's be real, creating original content is HARD. It takes time and can get expensive.

So why do it all yourself? Clever, insightful curation of other people’s content can add plenty of value for your audience.

There is an art and skill to 'borrowing' the work of others and by filtering and organizing information relevant to your audience, you are delivering a useful service.

Even if you are generating a lot of your own original content, sharing the work of others (ie. curation) is a handy technique for building community and letting your readers know that it’s not all about you, all the time.

Tip Hero

If you've been on Facebook lately, we're sure you've seen Tip Hero videos and articles popping up on your newsfeed. They are absolutely dominating Facebook. They have a whopping 12 million fans on Facebook and in January 2016 their website saw over 10 million visits.

1. Here Pup

Here Pup (previously Chewie Says) is a dog news sites. They post news about and for dogs, helpful tips and tricks, newsworthy events, etc. This infographic, Can My Dog Eat That, got more than 11k social shares, 33 backlinks from 13 referring domains, and a mention from BuzzFeed!

1. Graded quizzes

You've probably seen a few (or many) of these popping up on Facebook. These quizzes give participants a chance to show how knowledgeable they are on a particular subject.

2. Outcome quizzes

You know the type - What career should you have, what kind of dog are you, what city should you actually live in. These quizzes give participants a form of validation and insights into their personality.

Other studies actually show consumers trust user-generated content more than all other forms of media.

But, what happens if you don’t have much

Examples of UGC done right:

1. Quest Nutrition

Quest is the maker of the popular protein bar, Quest Protein Bars. Their Instagram is populated with content from their own customers. They continuously feature customers' snaps on their Instagram feed.

2. Clarks

Clarks is a popular footwear eCommerce company in Europe. They created a contest and got together with 8 bloggers (HINT: Influencer marketing strategy) from Central Europe to reveal how they wear their Clarks collection. People can submit their content by using the hashtag #shoesie and #clarks to Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook.

Further resources to support your research into getting UGC happening for your brand.

And here's the best part, you don't have to create new content. Simply repurpose your old content and publish it to SlideShare.

Examples of great SlideShare content:

1. Buffer

41,000 views for 10 minutes of work. Kevan Lee of Buffer created a slide deck for a blog post that is yet to go live, and the best thing is, he didn't do any promotion! That slide is now looking at 370,000 views and counting.

2. Traffic Generation Cafe

Ana Hoffman of Traffic Generation Cafe published 9 presentations on SlideShare, and here are the numbers that go with it - over 200,000 views, several first-page rankings, 1,400 clicks to the website and her Facebook fan page, 400+ new Facebook fans, second largest referral traffic source. All of that in 30 days.

Further resources for checking out Slideshare for your content marketing.

Conclusion

Now you should be clear on some great opportunities to curate and create content that people want to share, all without spending budget. Do you have any other methods that we left out? Share your expertise with our readers. We’d love to hear from you.

Next week, we’re going to delve into the final part of this series and show you how to promote your content with literally ZERO dollars.